Jennifer Noel

Gravestone Technology

I actually found this article late last week, but decided to save it for my news comment this week. Like it says in the article, some people may find this addition great, while others will hate it. I for one think this is just a little too far and maybe slightly tacky? Though graveyards have an appeal all there own, I still feel that they are peaceful. A place where your loved ones are laid to rest.

I don’t know about most people, but I for one do not want to stand in a graveyard with my tablet or smartphone to read about someone’s life. Most people who visit grave sites are there to grieve, place memorials or just to “visit” their past loved one. If I’m going to hear about a person’s life and information, I want to be discussing those good times and bad times with family and friends. If you’re just there to creep on people you don’t know, just Google their name at home. Its easier and less creepy.

Nicole Kidman & Scientology

First of all, I think that scientology is kind of an odd religion. No religion should break up a family by forcing children to reject one of their parents. I feel very sad that it not only happened to Katie Holmes but also Nicole Kidman. I wonder if she saw it coming after Katie.

The fact that he auditioned for wives just seems ridiculous to me! No relationship or marriage should be based on an “interview.” This was a very newsworthy article because it involved religion and a celebrity. Two very hard hitting points in media. At the same time, I feel bad these two women have to have such personal parts of their life in the media when they are probably both grieving over their tough situations.

Whale Vomit

Since we’ve been talking about newsworthy and un-newsworthy articles, I decided to use this article I found on whale vomit, (yes whale vomit), to question further if more often then not, news can be considered newsworthy. As I’m looking through my YAHOO! homepage, I’m was finding it very hard to pick an article that didn’t suck.

As we’ve discussed before, news should be intriguing. It should make you want to read more about the article from just the first few sentences. However, when I started to read this article, I couldn’t help but keep asking myself, “Why the hell am I reading about whale vomit!?” So to begin, this news article has a bad attention getter.

Other than the fact that I was purposely looking for an article that was bad enough to earn the title ‘un-newsworthy,’ I would never normally read something that takes until almost the end to get to the point of why this particular whale vomit is so important. Which brings me to point two. People like detail, but if it takes until the middle of a pointless subject to get to the ‘good stuff,’ then its already a crappy news release. Many people get bored easily, so you can’t lose them before you get to the point.

Finally, I could not have been more disappointed with the ending. The kid could get almost $300,000 for this piece of vomit and what is he going to do with it?- Buy a house for animals. Now, please don’t get me wrong, I LOVE animals. However, when your 8-years old, the fate of that much money should not be put in your hands. Why would the parents not put this in savings, or something like, a charity that feeds hungry people. We have lots of hungry people! In short, this is not a newsworthy article. Bad beginning, slow to get exciting and bombed the ending.

Jen